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Topic: new guy wanting to share some pics (Read 5441 times)

I'm glad to know there are other people in the world like me who can't stop thinking about pizza. Here is a series of pics from tonight's supper. I got a new extra-large metal peel today and just had to try her out. This is my ingredients and procedure:

Put salt into zojirushi bread machine, add water (heat water in microwave for 1 minute first), add evoo followed by caputo followed by yeast, run on standard cycle which mixes and kneads dough for about 20 minutes. Allow first ferment in bread machine (about 30 minutes). Remove dough from bread machine, punch down, roll into ball with tight skin and ferment again while oven heats to 500. My oven is gas and I keep a stone right on the bottom, below all the racks. When oven is ready (usually about 30 minutes) the dough is also ready for shaping. Hand toss into a large pie 14-16 inches across. Top as desired. The pie tonight was red sauce (home made from Titina's San Marzano tomatoes) light amount of Sergento shredded italian 6-cheese blend, pepperoni, thin sliced genoa salami, and a special touch. The special touch tonight was a mixture of shredded italian hard cheeses that were left over from Thanksgiving. They included umbreccio, bra duro, piave, and montegrappa. I am not exactly sure how long I bake but it doesn't take long, perhaps 6-8 minutes with a 180° turn about half way thru. Hopefully, the pics will come out nicely. Thanks for looking!

If memory serves me, I believe you are the first member to use a bread machine to make a short-term dough (in less than two hours?) using Caputo flour. Can you describe the profile of the finished crust, in terms of taste, texture, etc.?

Didn't mean to break protocol regarding which forum to post on. I don't consider myself a newbie when it comes to making pizza, just new to this forum. Please accept my apologies.

As for the 'short' Caputo crust, there is some explaining. Early on, I started using several of the high gluten flours because they were touted as being ideal for 'chewy' pizza crust. I used several KA flours including Sir Lancelot, bread flour, artisan bread flour, and clear flour. The most remarkable thing about these doughs was poor handling qualities. It was very difficult to get the dough thinned and shaped for a pie that will be baked directly on the stone. Then I tried a different idea by going to lower protein flours such as Italian style 00. The handling qualities of the dough were immediately improved and the shaping process became a joy. Toss one of these up a few times and it virtually shapes itself perfectly. I live in Pittsburgh and Penn Mac is a routine stop. They just happen to sell Caputo in 50 lb sacks (joy, joy).

The texture is crispy on the outside and lightly chewy on the inside. It is not unusual to have nice pockets of air form. I would not call it bread-like. Nor is it cracker-like. There is a distinct crispness/crunchiness on the very outside of the edge crust and on the bottom where it contacts the stone. This layer is moderately thin. It is very much like the outer texture of a fresh loaf of San Francisco sour dough but not quite as crisp as a hard roll. The texture under the surface is light and not doughy. I'm not sure how else to describe it. The taste is classic Caputo with pronounced wheat flavor that dominates despite the presence of salt and olive oil.

Sharp eye on the second stone! It's not in there for any pizza strategy. I use the second one for middle of the oven breads and such. The bottom stone has been there for at least 5 years. Every once in a while I vacuum around it.

I spent a lot of time on this forum over the past few days and I've learned some things already. Thank you all so much. My next endeavor is deep dish which I'll be doing tomorrow if all goes well. The dough is currently resting in the fridge. I'll try to create another post on this.

Thank you both for the warm welcome! And, no apologies necessary. It's all good with me. I'm looking forward to learning more about what goes on at this forum and hopefully I'll have more to contribute.